


Every good thing hurts, once in a while

by El_Red



Category: Firebringer - Team StarKid
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Jemilla is precious and Zazz is babey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 15:22:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20968739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/El_Red/pseuds/El_Red
Summary: Jemilla and Zazzalil have a little fight, they then proceed to each blow it out of proportion and get really sad-She felt the anger drain from her, leaving her empty and sad, she wanted this to be over. She just wanted to be able to hold her wife again."Please J, I wanna help. Don't shut me out"-Enjoy





	Every good thing hurts, once in a while

"Jemilla? What's wrong?"  
It was Shwoopsie who found her, which seemed altogether some cruel twist, not that it really mattered who it was. But she'd been hoping it was Zazzalil, secretly, even to herself, wishing that her wife would sit next to her and tell her it was all going to be ok. She didn't though, because Zazzalil was busy being mad at Jemilla, she probably hated her again. She sighed, raising her head and looking at the horizon in blank surprise, she hadn't even noticed the sun start setting.

When Jemilla didn't reply Shwoopsie went on,  
"Are you ok? No-one knew where you went, we were worried."   
Jemilla resisted the urge to scoff and immediately felt herself tear up again.   
"I'm fine Shwoops, don't worry, just…" she gestured vaguely at the colour drenched sky "watching the sunset. You guys don't need me around all the time anymore, I thought I'd catch a break"   
It wasn't totally untrue, the tribe were becoming more and more self sufficient and reliable, only needing leaders for big decisions and someone to turn to. Zazzalil and herself finding more time to do their own jobs than Jemilla had ever had before fire.

Shwoopsie made an unconvinced noise and sat beside her, legs dangling off the rock Jemilla had been sitting on for what must be hours now, and turned to face her.   
"Tiblyn heard you two shouting, she seemed really upset about it actually, didn't tell us for hours. We thought you'd just gone on a walk or something, but you didn't come back. Zazzalil stayed, but she didn't say anything about it, didn't really say much at all to be honest. She seemed kind of lost.", She sighed,  
"What happened Jemilla? I would've thought out of the two of you Zazz would be the first to run off."

Jemilla felt tears well up in her eyes and spill hot onto her skin, the sky marring into a mess of pink and orange as she started to cry again.   
" I fucked up Shwoops"  
she half turned towards her friend, falling into her arms blindly and sobbed into her shoulder. Shwoopsie, to her credit, took it very well, rubbing Jemillas back and saying something about everything being fixable. Jemilla wasn't really listening though, she was thinking about Zazzalil, about how her wife smiled and laughed, and how she looked right before Jemilla left. Like someone had flicked a switch, her face closed off and cold, staring at Jemilla like she didn't know her. She felt-just as in the memory-like someone (probably Zazzalil, maybe even herself) had driven one of her wife's prized spears right through her chest. She made a noise like a wounded animal and pulled away from Shwoopsie, stumbling upright and dragging her hands under her eyes roughly, trying to stop the tears. She didn't deserve to cry, she had been the one to ruin everything she and Zazzalil had worked towards in the few months they'd been married, it was worse than anytime they'd faught before, now the absence hurt as much as the actual fight had, the fact that Zazzalil hadn't come to find her solidifying everything Jemilla had imagined in the time she'd sat on this stupid rock and wallowed in her own idiocy. She turned back to Shwoopsie,

"We were just talking about hunting, she keeps saying stuff about going out alone, that it's too telling to have two people at the same time. And I know it's stupid, but I just blew up about it, I don't know what happened, we've talked about it before and I didn't..."  
she was crying again, she started to pace,   
"I'm just so scared, what if she got hurt? Noone should go into the forest further than the river alone, we all agreed that. And I know she wouldn't let anyone else go out on their own if they asked. I don't understand why she thinks it would be ok that she does! Even with fire and spears anything could go wrong, and if she doesn't come back then we have no idea what happened." She looked up at Shwoopsie briefly and pressed on,  
"She kept arguing that it would be fine and that I shouldn't worry so much! Of course I'm going to worry! She's talking about going out of the safety of the village, alone, with no real knowledge of what's going to happen, I mean, fuck, shwoops she could die!" She stopped herself then, reeling at the thought, hiccuping sobs rolling out of her throat, she felt dizzy, maybe she was going to faint, or vomit, she didn't know. She sat down again, sinking to the ground in a very un-Jemilla like heap.   
"I said some shit Shwoopsie, stuff I really don't mean, I shouldn't've said any of it, but I was so scared. And now I've gone and fucked it all up and now she probably hates me and, and-" she broke off, burying her face in her hands and completely dissolving into tears again.

Shwoopsie got up from her seat and knelt by her friend, she placed a gentle hand on Jemillas back and rubbed it softly.   
"She doesn't hate you Jemilla. And as for the rest, I think you should say pretty much exactly what you just said to me to Zazzalil, and maybe she'll understand. She loves you so much Jem, talk to her, okay?"   
Jemilla sniffed, nodding slightly, she dried her eyes as best she could and nodded again, more decisively, stood up and grabbed Shwoopsies arm, leading her back to the glow of the village at the bottom of the hill in the now darkness. When they got to the edge of the firelit area Shwoopsie pulled back, she smiled at Jemilla, nodding to the chiefs hut encouragingly,   
"Go get her, peacemaker"   
Jemilla smiled too, briefly. And set off towards her home, towards her wife, her stomach flipped and she hesitated before knocking lightly on the door and slipping through it.

\----------

Jemilla must have left hours ago, Zazzalil thought, or maybe it was minutes. She didn't even notice she was crying until her shoulders started to shake, broken sobs rolling out of her chest and she felt as though she were about to shatter. She sat down on the log next to their bed and swallowed back her tears, staring at the floor with determination, fists clenched, blinking hard when her vision blurred again. It didn't work. She wanted to scream, she picked up a mound of cloth from the bed and threw it wildly at the wall of the hut. She watched it fall and didn't feel better, she stared at it on the floor, and in noticing that it was Jemillas new favourite blanket felt wholly worse, and had a desperate urge to light something on fire. Instead, she crossed the room and picked the blanket up from the floor, shook it out, then folded it and placed it back onto the bed. She sat down again. 

She had screwed up, that much was obvious. She hadn't seen Jemilla that angry since the time when they were kids when, while the adults were away warring with a neighboring tribe, Molag had left Jemilla in charge and Zazzalil, Keeri and Smelly-balls had decided to live up a tree and got stuck, together, and stayed out there the whole night. They had managed to get down some time after sunrise the next morning and had snuck back into the cave quietly trying not to get caught. Unfortunately for them, loudly telling Tiblyn and Emberly about their adventure turned out to not be the right thing to do when Jemilla was being naturally overachieving and also on edge due to that being the first time she had been left in control of the little group. Zazzalil still remembers the morning as the first time she saw Jemilla cry, and that at the time, with her own anger, the fact that Jemilla couldn't even shout at them without crying had made her feel so much stronger. And now the tears she had seen on her wife's face when she argued whatever meaningless point Zazzalil had tried to fight her on, felt more like bits of broken flint. Stabbing into her soul.

She stood up again, and thought about the fight, about what Jemilla had said. The memory hurt so much it was slightly destabilising, but she didn't quite know why. She knew she was in the wrong, that much was obvious, but Jemilla couldn't mean everything she said, could she? Zazzalil knew that her wife loved her, she'd told her just that morning in fact. And they had come so far from the petty arguments they'd had before they got married, so why did Jemilla say that she expected this from Zazzalil? She didn't think she still went out of her way to make arguments did she? They had barely fought at all, what if Zazz had been doing stuff that annoyed Jemilla the whole time and she hadn't noticed, but Jemilla thought she was trying to start a fight, and just wasn't bringing it up for peace reasons? Zazzalil started pacing, she didn't want her wife to ever think she couldn't tell her something. 

The other thing was worse, she swallowed back more tears at the memory.   
"I should have known you wouldn't stick to your word. You never could do teamwork."   
The ice in her voice had been as startling as the words themselves, the conviction on Jemillas face, Zazzalil didn't doubt that she meant it, believed it in the moment. Had felt herself close up as Jemilla ran. 

She waited inside for another while, sitting on Jemillas side of their bed replaying the argument over and over in her head. 

Zazzalil went out to the tribe alone, they were sitting around the fire whispering, which meant they knew something was going on. This group of idiots were the least subtle creatures Zazzalil had ever interacted with, but at least they were trying. She nodded a greeting to Shwoopsie and sat down close to the fire, watching as Emberly and Smelly-balls roasted a boar over the flames, the fat dripping with sick sizzles onto hot ash. Zazzalil was not in any way hungry, she was still barely not crying, she looked at the forest and wondered where Jemilla had actually gone, her eyes scanned to a hill just past the tree line, Jemilla had told her once -in a quiet moment where they had stared into each others eyes and promised the world away- that it was her favourite place to go when everything got too much. This definitely counted as too much. 

While they were eating, Zazzalil managed to catch 5 hurried glances from her friends the 3 times she looked up from her food. She thought it must be a record, the amount of obviousness and awkward her parade of dumbasses portrayed seemed to only be heightened by the tension Zazzalil could feel settled on her shoulders and around her neck, squeezing tighter every time she tried to eat anything until she just gave up, pushing herself forward to tend to the fire instead. 

Zazzalil went back into the hut after Shwoopsie whispered something to Tiblyn and walked straight towards the hill Zazzalil was sure Jemilla was sitting at the top of, watching the sun start to slip below the horizon. She cast one more look around the assembled tribe, muttered a few words of parting, and went inside.

She stood just inside the door for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to darkness and went to light the small fire in the centre of the mud floor. She sat back when the spark caught and closed her eyes, mind washing with images of teaching Jemilla how to create her greatest invention in the privacy of their own home, remembered how her wife's face lit up in tandem to to the kindling at having figured it out, and how she had smiled into Zazzalil's congratulatory kisses. 

By the time there was a knock on the door Zazzalil had tidied the little mess she had left on the floor and re-ordered her "armory" at least three times. She stood abruptly as the door opened, spinning around so fast she tripped over the prototype "bow" she had been staring at and nearly fell right into Jemillas arms. She caught herself with a cough and picked up the bow, replaced it in its place and retreated a safe distance away from her wife, standing on the other side of the fire and staring stubbornly at the doorpost just to the left of Jemillas knee. 

\----------

Jemilla had tried really hard not to expect anything in particular in the short walk back to the village, but Zazzalil refusing to even look at her still felt like a particular type of betrayal. Her eyes welled up again and she blinked to stop the tears, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot in the doorway, staring at the top of her wife's head as tension pooled into the small space between them. Zazzalil's shoulders twitched like she wanted to look up and Jemilla resigned herself to staring at where her wife's eyes would be and waiting. She scratched her arm without really thinking about it, but Zazzalil snapped her eyes up to the movement and Jemilla could see more of her face, drawn together in a telltale frown, it was her least favourite of Jemilla's habits. She did it again, just to see, pressing a bit harder into the skin below her elbow, and Zazzalil's eyebrows tightened even more and she looked for a second at the space next to Jemilla's neck. Jemilla kept going and, just as it started to hurt,

"Can you not."  
Jemilla stopped, clasping her fingers around her wrist instead and found that it wasn't easier to find something to say even when Zazzalil had spoken first.   
"Sorry"   
She wanted to elaborate, tell Zazz everything and beg for her to fix it, but she'd always been a coward. So she just looked into her wife's face and hoped that Zazzalil would pick up all that she wanted to say. 

Zazzalil didn't, she seemed even more irritated by the lack of meaning in Jemillas answer. She glared harder at just below Jemillas ear and clenched her fists at her sides. This was going well.

\----------

It wasn't like refusing to look at Jemilla was petty. It was just that she was sure that if she looked into her wife's face she would either start crying or screaming at the other woman. She heard Jemilla sigh, and saw her hand begin moving absently on her arm again. That was the worst thing, she hated how Jemilla seemed to think that leaving little welt like abrasions on her skin was an ok way to deal with stress and she hated that she was standing doing nothing while Jemilla was obviously stressed. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and when she opened them again she was staring directly into her wife's eyes. She immediately wanted to take it back. 

Jemillas face was tired. Her eyes were big and sad and red rimmed and there was a smear of mud on her cheek, she looked back at Zazzalil like she was waiting for something, no not waiting, resigned. She looked like she was expecting Zazz to say something awful, and it just succeeded in making her want to scream even more, like her blood was pushing at the walls of her veins fighting to get out with all the strength of a herd of not-dead mammoths. She wiped her palms flat on her dress and tried not to let the anger show, but by the sadness that was pooling into Jemillas eyes, she wasn't succeeding. 

"Why did you run?" She barely kept her voice steady and Jemilla immediately dropped her gaze, just stood in front of Zazzalil, opening and closing her mouth and wringing her hands. Zazzalil sighed, she nodded and let her fists clench again. 

"I'm sorry" 

She sounded like she was about to cry, maybe she was crying. Zazzalil couldn't tell.  
"That's not an answer."  
Jemilla made a sound like she was trying to stop from sobbing and Zazzalil just wanted to run, to leave and not have to deal with the waves of hurt crashing over her. She let out a shaky breath.   
"If you don't tell me what happened we can't fix it. If you don't talk to me I can't do anything." She wanted to scream at Jemilla, scream that she was sorry too, that she didn't understand, that she needed her so much. Too much to just let her stand and cry without trying to fix it. 

Then Jemilla broke, she threw herself forward like she had been released from something and fell straight into Zazzalil's arms, wrapping her own around the smaller woman's neck and sobbing into her hair, whispering something between gasps that Zazzalil couldn't understand. She pushed her back, slowly, not far enough away that the were not touching but enough so she could see Jemillas face. She felt the anger drain from her, leaving her empty and sad, she wanted this to be over. She just wanted to be able to hold her wife again.  
"Please J, I wanna help. Don't shut me out"  
Jemilla shook her head and wiped her eyes

"I'm so sorry, sorry that we fought and that I got mad. I shouldn't have, and it wasn't that important, and I know you weren't trying to upset me, I just-" she shook her head and kept going, detaching herself from Zazzalil as she spoke and began to pace back and forth in front of her, looking steadily at her hands. "I'm sorry I ran. I didn't mean to be so long, I lost track of time, you all must've been worried. I didn't want that."   
Zazzalil could tell she was deflecting, that she was rambling on about something so that she could convince Zazzalil she was ok. It really wasn't working.

"Jemilla sweetie, stop.   
I love you, you know that?" Jemilla froze mid pivot, her whole body tense and she stared resolutely at the floor. Zazzalil could she her swallow, hear how shaky her breath was.   
"Oh baby, I really do. No matter what." she walked towards Jemilla and as she got closer she could see the tears running silently down Jemillas face and she felt her heart break for her, she wished more than ever that she had been quick enough to stop her from leaving in the first place.

When Zazzalil was standing toe to toe with her wife she held her arms open, curling them around Jemilla without touching her and staring up into her downturned face, Jemilla seemed to have stopped breathing.   
"I'm sorry too J, and we're gonna work it out." Zazzalil smiled softly up at Jemilla, gesturing slightly at her waiting arms when tear filled dark eyes met hers and Jemilla fell forward, crashing into Zazzalil again and clutching onto her waist, letting herself be led back to the bed and following Zazzalil as she lay them both down and rearranged it so that they were side by side, their legs tangled together, bodies as close as possible. Trying to seek out all the possible comfort they could find. 

Five minutes later Jemilla spoke again, her voice quiet with the dregs of anxiety that had yet to fade   
"You know I didn't mean it right? What I said about you always arguing with stuff, and I trust you more than anything. You've proved yourself to be stubborn enough to keep a promise." She detangles herself enough to look Zazz in the eyes, watching her formulate a response   
"I wasn't sure, but I'm glad you didn't."   
Jemilla nodded, setting her head back down onto Zazzalil's shoulder   
"I love you Zazz."   
"I love you too J-mils, to the ends of the earth"  
"The earth is round babe, We know that now."   
"Perfect, then it can never end"   
Zazzalil could swear that Jemillas smile was brighter than a million fires, a million suns and she never wanted it to go out.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading lads! Comment if you liked it :) have a good day


End file.
